


The Rebel Snakes

by linnythings



Series: Nakhash [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Actual Overweight Characters, Antisemitism, F/M, Fun with Hebrew, Gen, Good Slytherins, Intellectual Tension, Linguistically Brilliant Harry, Malfoy is a Brat with Potential for Redemption, Mentions of Cancer, Multucultural Magic, Original Character Death(s), Pureblood Bigotry, Rebellion, Snape is So Tired of Everything, Snark, Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare, Umbridge Bashing, Waxing Philosophical, World Exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-02 05:29:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4047946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linnythings/pseuds/linnythings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the trio's fifth year, they come across a band of Slytherins who want to make their own stand against Voldemort. Their leader - the sharp and unconventional David Gold - has something Harry wants. And Hermione... well, she'd like to call it a mind-crush. An exploration of culture, language, class structure and exclusion in the wizarding world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hebraic Magic and Other Surprises

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of an odd little plotbunny that wouldn't leave me alone. I'm often annoyed by the broad strokes in which the Slytherins seem to be painted, and I've always been curious about the idea of magic in other cultures.

Hermione'd been off for weeks. At first Harry thought it was just accumulated humiliation over the spectacular failure of S.P.E.W., but that couldn't explain it in full. It was like third year all over again – she was always in the library, always bent over a book at mealtimes, always overtired and quick to snap. Days of questions got nothing more out of her than a sniff and a dismissive 'oh, I'm just busy with schoolwork, you know, that thing that some of us actually _do ___?" But one day after classes they found her looking more miserable even than before, and as soon as Ron opened his mouth, she burst into tears.

"Alright- alright!" A hard sniff. "I'm not top of the year in Arithmancy any more!"

Harry, who'd thought it was something serious, had to try and hide a grin, but Hermione caught sight of it and glared at him with eyes full of hurt.

"Well I knew you'd think it's swotty, that's why I didn't tell you!" She sniffed, rubbing at her eyes. "Maybe it is – it's just – Vector likes him best now, and she always liked me, and he's a pure-blood – a Slytherin – and I – I feel like I've let the Muggleborns down. I didn't work hard enough and now everyone's going to think, oh, of course he did better, he's a pure-blood, but he's just too quick for me -"

By that point Harry already felt terrible for laughing. Ron's hand formed a fist. "Who is he? One of Malfoy's gang? I'll hex his teeth in."

"Don't, Ronald. You can't hex someone just for being better than me." She sniffed again. "David Gold."

Harry was surprised to hear that name. Gold was in their year, a Slytherin usually tailed by a gaggle of lower-years, who appeared to answer to him completely. He was a very fat boy with a carefully-styled head of hair and a perpetually bored expression. Harry had never actually spoken to him, but his first impression was that David Gold reminded him immediately of Dudley. But Dudley certainly never would have made a passing grade in Arithmancy – let alone bested the brightest witch of her age.

Ron seemed surprised too, but for a very different reason. "But-" He looked baffled. "You know he's not a _real ___pureblood? I mean, not by Slytherin's standards."

"Why not?"

"He's pureblood wizard, but the Golds are from Israel. They're Hebraic wizards. A lot of pureblood English families look down on that." Ron wrinkled his nose, embarrassed on behalf of the world he'd grown up in.

Hermione huffed. She looked substantially cheered-up, Harry noticed. "Honestly, you lot are downright Medieval sometimes."

"There are Hebraic wizards?" asked Harry.

"Sure. Spells can be in any language so long as it's old enough. There's Sanskrit magic – Arabic magic-"

"-Old Saxon magic-"

"-Think I heard once about spellcasters in ancient China who-"

"So how come we don't learn any of those spells?" asked Harry, abruptly, feeling a little like he had in first year, all over again. The wizarding world would never be empty of surprises.

"Well…" Ron looked embarrassed again. "S'pose Western wizards just like to think we're the best. Bit terrible really, but there it is. Gold uses Hebrew magic all the time, and Malfoy thinks it's some kind of perversion. Hate each other, those two."

"He can't be all bad then."

"He's not!"

Both boys stared at Hermione, and she flushed, looking down. "He's – well, a bit smug-"

"If you pricked him, gravy and self-satisfaction would come out," offered Ron. Harry tried not to smirk.

"He's brilliant," sniffed Hermione. "Don't be bullies."

Hermione snapped her book shut and left, and Ron sulked at his joke falling flat. Harry wasn't sure whether it was that Hermione didn't want to be beaten by anyone less than brilliant, or just that she had found a new cause to champion, but he was nowhere near as bothered as Ron – all he could think about was that if Western wizards didn't know any Hebrew Magic, then it would be a tool that Voldemort might not see coming. He had to find David Gold.

________________________________________

The only hard part about finding David Gold was that he never seemed to be alone. Harry didn't want to approach him at the Slytherin table – where he sat every mealtime, taking up twice as much space on the bench as his gaggle of followers, talking animatedly as he ate while they hung onto every word – and they didn't have a single class together. Then one day serendipity struck. In the surprising form of a detention with Dolores Umbridge.

As soon as he walked into the room Harry felt eyes on him – and for once they were not the beady, mean eyes of their new defence teacher. At the only desk in the room besides Harry's, David Gold gave him the very barest of nods. It was the first time he'd ever seen a Slytherin in detention with Umbridge.

"Hem-hem."

Harry quickly took his seat. Umbridge gave them a sickly smile. "Well, now that Potter is here, let's begin, shall we?" She handed out rolls of parchment, and then, to each of them, the massive, ugly quill. "How lucky we are that I thought to have a second quill made. I'm far too busy this week for two detentions – but we couldn't let rule-breakers and bad attitudes go unpunished, could we? Now, I think you know what to write, Potter?"

Harry willed her disintegrate into a thousand tiny pieces topped by an ugly, blackfly-like bow. "Yes, Ma'am."

"And you, Gold?"

"Remind me? It's _branded onto my skin ___-"

Umbridge's eyes flashed. "I beg your pardon?"

"Yes, Ma'am." Under the desk, Harry could see that his fat hands were clenched with rage. Scarred onto the back of one of them were the words _I must not question authority ___.

________________________________________

It was midnight before she let them out. Both boys hadn't allowed a moment of pain to cross their faces while Umbridge was in the room, but now Gold was pressing at his hand to stop the bleeding, his face tight. The Dudley-like quality of overfed self-satisfaction was harder to see now, or easier to ignore - and Harry probably would have felt for even Dudley, if he'd ever been subjected to a blood quill.

Harry saw his chance. "Essence of Murtlap helps," he offered quietly. Gold raised an eyebrow at him. Harry shrugged. "Hermione should still have a bottle left, she could give you some."

"Granger?"

"She's in your Arithmancy class."

"Oh, I know who she is. Doubt she'd want to give me much besides a swift kick." He seemed to deliberate for a moment, cradling his hand. "You reckon it's worth a try?"

"She'll help," said Harry, firmly. "Come on – I'll take you to the common room."

"Well, my evening wouldn't be complete without getting mobbed for encroaching on Gryffindor territory," observed Gold, with a trace of a wry grin. "Alright, Potter, you're the presumable expert in Umbridge-resistance. Lead on."

They were in the first floor east corridor and Harry was considering how best to broach the topic of Hebrew magic when the sound of shuffling feet suddenly reminded him that it was after hours. "Filch!" he hissed to Gold. "Run!"

He didn't look back until he'd reached the staircase. Gold was twenty paces behind him, breathing hard and glowering. "Do I _look ___like I run?"

"I don't want two detentions in one night, do you?"

"-Somebody in the corridors, my sweet?"

Harry ducked, pressing himself up against the side of the steps to hide from view. He wished he'd brought his cloak. Beside him, Gold didn't seem to be making much effort to hide his bulk. He raised a hand, as if to assuage Harry's concern, and aimed his wand at the doorway.

" _Avar lev ___," he murmured, as Filch's balding head came into view. His voice was low and strangely musical.

Filch moved through the room, looking this way and that, but his gaze never seemed to settle on anything. It was as if Gold and Harry were simply not there. When Filch was gone, Gold pocketed his wand and gave Harry a look, like a very unimpressed teacher.

"I've never heard of that spell."

"You're not supposed to have heard of it. It's not so much a concealment as a misdirection spell - makes them fail to notice that anything's out of the ordinary. I find concealment spells always leave a bit of a shimmer in the air, and Filch knows enough to look for that."

"So... that was Hebraic magic?"

"Correct."

"What other kinds of spells are there?"

Gold raised an eyebrow at him. "All kinds. Why so curious, Potter?"

Harry bit his tongue. How much did he trust Gold? At first, all he could fix on was the Slytherin tie around the other boy's neck, but then he thought of the words scarred into his hand.

"Umbridge isn't teaching us defence. We need to learn any way we can. And teach each other. I don't care what the Ministry says – Voldermort's back."

Gold gave him a long, slow, appraising look. "Most Hebrew spells are well-kept secrets, Potter. Rule number one in your house is don't tell a Slytherin. Rule number one in my family is don't tell a Goy."

"We can't afford house rivalries any more. We can't afford to maintain differences. I think you want Voldemort gone as much as we do. We need to work together - all of us."

"And yet you haven't told any Slyths about your little defence club," Gold pointed out, stopping in his tracks to face Harry.

Harry faltered. It was true – they had Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws, but there had been no Slytherins yet. It was worrisome to think the Slytherins knew about it at all. "How did you-"

"I make it my business to know things. Don't worry, I'm not going to blab on you, Potter. We're not all in the pockets of the muppet baby Death Eaters, despite what you Gryffs seem to think." Angrily, he stuck his scarred and bleeding hand into Harry's face. "Some of us can think for ourselves."

"We've had to be careful," said Harry. "We're just starting – If Malfoy found out-"

"Draco Malfoy is a schmendrik little bitch. What's he going to do? Set his pet dancing bears on you?"

Harry wanted to laugh, but the subject matter was a little too grim. "His father. He has connections. And now Umbridge has Hogwarts wrapped around her finger – if he goes to her and shuts us down, the whole school's defenceless."

Gold scowled, and started walking again, in the direction of Gryffindor tower.

"So – will you teach me?" asked Harry, catching up with him.

"Fine. But I want in. Me, and my snakes."

"Your snakes?" Harry thought to the gaggle of lower-year Slytherins who surrounded Gold in the Great Hall.

"My snakes. Slytherins who oppose You-Know-Who." There was a strange mix of protectiveness and anger in Gold's voice. "They're mostly Muggleborns, or half-bloods, or they're like me. They've got as much reason to want him gone as any Gryffindor – maybe more, since out house calls us a stain on the name of Slytherin and the rest of the school calls us Death Eater scum."

Harry was quiet for a moment, thinking hard. A whole group of Slytherins. The rest of them weren't going to be happy. Ron especially. "…We'll need to talk to each one alone," he decided, at last, "but if nothing seems suspicious, we'll take them."

________________________________________

"Harry, we were really worried!" Hermione launched herself at him the moment Harry came through the portrait.

"We thought she'd killed you, mate- what's [i]he[/i] doing here?"

All eyes had come to rest on Gold, who crossed his arms and scowled. "I'm a Slytherin, not a manticore. Potter's doing me a favour."

"It's fine, he's with me." Harry gestured for a quiet word with Ron and Hermione. "I've made a deal with him," he told them, in a whisper. "He's going to teach us Hebrew defence spells."

"Harry, are you mental? Even if he weren't a git - he's a Slytherin!"

Hermione seemed to have seized on Harry's idea immediately. He had also, interestingly, gone a bit pink. "We can't just decide all of Slytherin house is the enemy, Ronald! I think it's a great idea, Harry-"

"How do we know he's on our side?" asked Ron.

Across the room, Gold's black eyes flashed, Evidently Ron had whispered a bit too loud. "I'm Jewish, Weasley. I don't know if English purebloods bother with Muggle history, but the whole 'dictator trying to purify the pedigree of an entire nation' business ought to raise a few alarm bells. Umbridge's already marked my skin. You think I'm on the Death Eaters' side?"

The room fell uncomfortably quiet. Harry cleared his throat. "Hermione, have you got any more Essence of Murtlap?"


	2. I Must Not Question Authority

"Let me see?"

Gold raised an eyebrow at Hermione, but stuck his hand out. She could tell by looking it the marks that Gold had undergone sessions with the blood quill before. They were as bad as Harry's had been.

"She's an evil hag," said Hermione, with feeling. "You should have been using Murtlap a long time ago – I don't know if the scar's going to go away."

"So I'll never be pretty?"

Hermione tried not to grin. "Here, just soak it in that."

Gold looked dubious, but he did as he was told, and as soon as his hand touched the liquid he seemed to relax. Hermione, to her own surprise, was enjoying herself. In Arithmancy he always made her look like a fool. But now she had the upper hand. David Gold hadn't realized that Murtlap would soothe any magically-aggravated wound – no, that took Hermione Granger.

"…That really works." He sounded surprised, pleased. "Thanks."

"Any time."

He grinned. _He might've been handsome if he were thinner_ , thought Hermione, and then banished the thought to the back of her mind.

"After Arithmancy, I thought you'd rather have me suffer."

"No, it's not like that – you beat me fairly. I wouldn't hesitate to do the same to you." Not wholly true - Hermione _had_ wanted him to suffer, back when he was a smug and superior pureblood. But now that she knew he was like her - looked down on because of his birth, by people who could never match his talent - it was hard not to feel a kinship. She tried to mirror that slightly evil smile. "It's nice to have a bit of competition. It wouldn't be much fun being first in all my classes."

"If it helps, I'm rubbish at potions," said Gold.

It did help, but Hermione wasn't going to tell him that. _Why couldn't Viktor Krum have had your brain, David?_

* * *

 

Gold hadn't known about the Room of Requirement, which was a huge relief to Harry. That meant it was still reasonably close to being a D.A. secret. It would be over an hour before the others got here. Harry wanted time to try out the spells himself before he tried to show the others.

They stood facing each other, wands out. "Hebraic magic is all about pitch and tone," said Gold. "It's almost canted."

"…You sing it?"

"Sort of. Don't go belting it like showtunes, but I do find it helps to think of it as music."

Harry had never been much good with music. He bit his lip.

"Nothing to it. _Hadlakat nerot_." In the space between them, a fire burst into form, warm and crackling and yet consuming the rug beneath it. Gold put it out with a wave of his wand. "You try."

Harry repeated the spell, trying to mimic the way Gold enunciated, the way his voice rose and fell. The fire that crackled into being was small and smoky, but it burned.

Gold deigned to look mildly impressed. "They don't call you the Chosen One for nothing, Potter – you'd fit in alright at a Gold Shabbat. Alright, let's try a hex. You're going to like Hebrew hexes. This one embeds your enemy face-first in the ground - Always fun at parties - _Yietken shetgedl kemv betsel_!"

Harry was pitched forward as the spell ploughed his face into a newly-formed cavern in the floorboards. _I bet the last party you were invited to was a Donner party,_ he thought, sourly, aware of the amusement on Gold's face as he picked himself up.

By the time the rest of the D.A. arrived, they were both bruised and tired and both, interestingly, sporting an extra nose (not, even more interestingly, on their faces). But Harry felt he'd begun to get the hang of it. Aside from their highly inventive use of hexes, Hebraic wizards seemed to put a lot of importance on defense. Blocking spells, hiding spells, spells that made longer-lasting shield charms or masked your scent. Spells that told you whether your loved ones were safe. Spells that could keep you from despair.

The other members were more than wary of the new member at first. Harry was all too glad he'd insisted on interviewing each of the snakes before he let them in – better to build trust gradually. Gold, Harry was amused to note, wound up partnered with Hermione. _Maybe that'll stick a few pins in his ego_ , he thought, and moved off to work with Neville.

* * *

Hermione stood over him with her arms crossed, trying not to grin. Gold blinked at her through loose strands of hair. His usually perfect coif had come completely to bits.

"Duel's not over, Granger."

"Yes it is, look at you." He was powerful, and his reflexes were surprisingly quick, but he couldn't dodge. He put too much trust in the Hebrew shielding charms they'd spent the first hour learning. It had taken a while, but eventually Hermione managed to sneak a stunning spell past his shields. Harry usually had the upper hand when they duelled, and Hermione knew it was because he trusted his instincts and stayed light on his feet. She tended to overthink things. Gold, meanwhile, was too big - or, more likely, simply too stubborn - to move around enough.

Gold started to get to his feet. Disoriented by the stunning spell, he was slow and clumsy. "You're enjoying every moment of this, aren't you."

Hermione wasn't sure whether she wanted to help him up or tip him over again. In the end, she didn't quite dare do either. "Maybe," she admitted, with a smile.

* * *

The little snakes seemed shy without their leader amongst them. But only at first. They were everything from purebloods to Muggleborns, but they all, Harry was quickly coming to realize, had an anger in them. Many were self-confessed blood traitors, appalled by the things their families had done. Some had lost family before Voldemort's downfall. Others more recently. A lot of them had tried to seek out other houses when their own wouldn't accept them and been turned away as if Slytherin had already tainted them.

"Is it so bad being ambitious?" one of them asked. "Knowing what you want and taking it? That's not bad – that's just living in the real world. That's just having suffered."

Ron was tough on them. Hermione mostly listened. At the end, he took them both off where the snakes couldn't hear him. "Well, what do you think?"

"It's risky," said Ron. "Why d'you think we should trust them?"

"I made a deal."

"With a complete git."

Harry frowned. Ron hadn't been like this when Gold was teaching them spells at the D.A. meeting. "He's not _that_ bad, Ron."

"He's an arrogant slug," groused Ron. "And his hair is ridiculous."

"Can we look at this logically, please?" Hermione was scowling at both of them. "If we're at all serious about actually uniting against You-Know-Who we need to show we'll welcome Slytherins who want to do the right thing. If we treat them all like second-class citizens, it's just going to turn them in the other direction-"

"Oh, you're not on about class systems _again_?"

"Yes, Ronald, because I am Muggleborn, and unlike wizards, Muggles tend to care about these things!"

"I'm not saying keep them out! I'm just saying we should be careful, just because one Slytherin shows us a few spells we don't need to bloody marry him!"

Hermione had opened her mouth to say something, and shut it abruptly. Harry took the opportunity to cut in. "You're both right. I don't think we can keep them out, but we can keep an eye on them with the map."

That seemed to reassure Ron – he scowled, but stayed silent.

"Hermione, you make sure the other houses don't give them a hard time. I'll deal with Gold."

Aside from the realization that it would temper Ron's jealousy a little, Harry wanted a chance to show Gold that even without Hebrew magic, he still knew a trick or two.

* * *

" _Spew_?"

"S.P.E.W."

"Granger, have you got even a single ounce of self-awareness?"

"You mean, do I spend an hour in the mirror every morning fussing with my hairdo?" asked Hermione, reaching up to swat at his elegant curls. They were in Arithmancy, ostensibly working on essays, and Vector was either lost in her own thoughts or turning a blind eye to the chatter of her two best students. They'd never been willing to talk to each other before.

Gold swatted her hand away. "Don't _touch_ it!" A mock-exasperated sigh. "Will you not allow me my one avenue of vanity?"

"Vanity? Now who's not self-aware?"

"Oh, you wound me, Granger."

"Well, by the time I realized it didn't sound good I'd already drawn up all the documents." She sniffed. "We're the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare."

"How many members?"

Nobody had ever treated it seriously enough to ask her that. Hermione felt like she'd triumphed. "…Well… just me and Ron and Harry right now… And Ron thinks it's stupid."

"The name is _very_ stupid. But. What's your platform?"

"Our short-term goals include the liberation of the Hogwarts elves-"

Gold held up a hand, cutting her off.

"Rude!"

"Don't care - What do you mean by 'liberation'?"

"Pay. Time off. A union." He was giving her the eyebrow look, and it made her feel foolish. "I've been making clothes to leave about the common-room…"

Gold put his face in his hands. "Granger, how can someone so clever be so thick?"

"Excuse me?" Hermione growled. "You care so much about your little snakes, but I don't see you doing anything for the most oppressed peoples in this society!"

"I am _not_ defending the way wizards treat their Elves. I think it's despicable. You're taking a stand. But have you thought about how paternalistic you sound?" Her glare, though fiery, wasn't enough to turn him away. "Forced liberation is barely a step away from forced slavery. Ultimately, you're still saying, 'I know what's best for you.' You want to help the Elves, you have to offer them a choice and respect their decision."

"But-" Hermione flushed red, searching for a rebuttal. "But they're conditioned to think this is right. We tell them what they're supposed to do, how can they know better when that's all they've ever known?"

"And you want to come in and tell them, 'no, stop listening to what the other humans have told you, listen to this human instead'?"

"Well what would _you_ do?"

"Recruit liberated Elves. Find one who shares your views already. Empower their community from within."

 _Dobby_. Hermione grinned. "For that idea, I'll waive your membership fee. Here." And she pressed a S.P.E.W. badge into his pudgy hand.

The next time she saw him, he was wearing it.

* * *

The snakes were not popular at first. They had a lot of potential – their anger gave them that – but they had a tendency to question everything Harry said. One day, towards the end of the D.A. meeting, he got impatient with it.

"How can pure happiness ward them off if they feed on it?"

"Couldn't you lot just take my word for it, for once?" asked Harry, shifting his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. Murmurs of agreement passed through the other three houses.

None of them said anything. Instead, a third-year snake named Thomas Tasker stepped forwards and showed Harry his hand. The pale white scars spelled out _I must not question authority_. The hands of several others said the exact same thing. Others read _I must not tell lies_.

They bore their scars like badges of honour.

"Never thought I'd say it but they've sort of got a point," Ron murmured, in Harry's ear.

"It's not that we don't trust you, Harry, but we're Slytherins. Naturally distrustful."

A fourth-year named Didon Pettyfer raised her hand. "People are fallible, even if the things they stand for aren't. Besides, it doesn't hold up to critical thinking – it'd be like trying to hold Gold off by throwing pumpkin pasties at him."

"Standing riiiiight here, Pettyfer," drawled Gold.

Harry thought of Dumbledore, who would not look Harry in the eye lately, let alone answer his questions, and found himself understanding.

"Alright – don't just believe it because I said so, go home and look it up. But I've had a lot of experience with Dementors and this really works. I'll demonstrate – _Expecto Patronum_!"

It was the Patroni, in the end, that brought them fully into the fold. Hours later, Tasker's gazelle ran circles of the room with Luna Lovegood's silvery rabbit, Pettyfer's wolf played with Ron's dog. Something in the room had changed – the snakes were no longer keeping together in a wary little knot of green ties and smart mouths. They had mixed in with the others. The four houses could all have been one.


	3. Hearts and Minds

She liked listening to him talk. Whenever he answered a question for Professor Vector, Hermione would close her eyes and drink in the intelligence in his voice. Closing her eyes seemed less important than before, though. He was heavy, but he moved with a certain strange confidence. She wished she could have cared so little what anybody thought of her.

After class, she caught him in the corridor just as he was leaving. "David!"

"Since when do you call me David, Granger?"

Hermione didn't reply. Instead, she handed him a golden galleon. "It's charmed," she whispered. "The numbers round the rim are the next D.A. meeting. They'll change every time we schedule one. I'm making more for the other snakes as soon as I can."

He stared at the coin, then looked up at her with unmistakable respect. He was smiling. "Nobody'd suspect a thing to find you carrying money – Granger, this is the cleverest thing I've seen all month."

And then Hermione did something very silly. She leaned in and pecked him on the cheek. "That means a lot, from you."

A moment later, she'd fled down the hall to her next class, confused at what had made her do it, and so she never saw Gold open his mouth to speak and find, for the first time in a decade, that no words were coming out.

* * *

 

Candles were very important in Hebraic magic. Harry was learning that. Some spells only worked when you had one lit. Some- mostly protection spells, powerful wards - had to be spoken in rhythm with the flickering flame. He'd spent last week focused on offence. Curses. A few hexes. Now he was turning his attention to wards. Broadening his repertoire. The intonation was the hardest part, but even if it would never sound as melodic as when Gold said it, there was still a kind of music in it.

"You really think learning this stuff is going to make a big difference?" asked Ron, from the bunk next to Harry, as the candle flame burned low.

"Dunno," answered Harry. "But I know it's easier to master than Occlumency, and at this point-"

"Anything could help?"

"Anything."

Ron seemed to be at peace with that answer. "The snakes haven't done anything on the map - I reckon they're safe enough," he admitted.

"Thanks, Ron," said Harry, pleasantly surprised.

"Whole house couldn't be evil, 'cos - you know what I thought of the other day?"

"What?"

"Well, you were nearly sorted Slytherin, weren't you?"

Harry paused. He had always thought - had felt it implied in Dumbledore's talk of choices deciding who he was - that choosing Gryffindor over Slytherin had somehow saved him. If he'd let the hat choose... would he have turned into another Malfoy? It seemed hard to fathom. The hat had talked about a thirst to prove himself. If _that_ was enough to earn you a place in Slytherin, Harry wasn't sure he didn't still belong there.

"'Sides-" Ron yawned."You're sorted when you're eleven. I've known some mean little shits at eleven but none of them were _evil_."

"I dunno, Dudley was pretty evil."

Ron snickered. "Remember the ton-tongue toffee?"

The thought of it cheered Harry up substantially. "Ol' Dudders was really more spoiled than evil if I'm being fair."

"Y'ever wonder if there's a difference? Y'know, if maybe it's just a, a sort of a hill you go down, from being a bit spoiled or angry or difficult to being proper evil?"

"You're feeling very philosophical tonight, Ron."

Ron shrugged. "The snakes made me think. Chess, chess is what I know. Black and white, right? Simple. But actually it isn't, always, because you're not this perfect leader who values all his pawns like we reckon Dumbledore is. You make sacrifices. So... it's all grey areas, isn't it? And who gave you the power to decide a pawn is a pawn?"

 _Dumbledore's not a perfect leader either, Ron. He's a chessmaster just like you._ Harry didn't say it aloud.

"In the end I don't think it matters who you are so much as what you're fighting for... Dumbledore'd probably be proud, you thinking to look outside of what's familiar for allies."

Harry didn't answer, and a short while later he heard Ron roll over and begin to snore. Dumbledore was amassing every tool he could. Harry knew that. But he didn't seem to understand that Harry could be useful – and now Harry had found a tool that not even Dumbledore knew about. He might have been fifteen, but he was not a child. Voldemort had taken his parents and the life of his classmate. Voldemort had taken his blood. How could he still be a child and know all that? He hadn't lost the thirst to prove himself at all. When the time came, he'd fight like an adult.

* * *

 

He was definitely a better kisser than Viktor Krum. Which was funny, because unlike Viktor Krum, David Gold, for all his swaggering assurance, had plainly never done anything like this before. It was oddly satisfying to see him turn so unsure of himself. They were in the abandoned girls' washroom and Hermione had one hand in his once-perfect hair and the other on the knot of his tie.

"Granger-"

"Hermione."

"You're mental, Hermione."

She _had_ gone a bit mental. A month ago she wouldn't have looked at him except to hate him. And now she was snogging him in a washroom. She, know-it-all ice queen Granger, who never broke the rules, least of all for a boy. A _Slytherin_ boy. And not even an attractive one - not that it seemed to matter right now. It was intellect that had done it, she realized. It was like his inner qualities had leaked outward. "Is that a complaint, David?"

"Merlin, no." David closed his eyes and kissed her hard, his teeth tugging at her lower lip. There was want behind it. It felt good, being wanted.

Then, suddenly, he pulled away like he'd been burnt. "This isn't a good idea."

"What's wrong?"

"I am."

Hermione had pressed herself up against him, carried away in the moment. She looked up at him and frowned. Honestly, he was ruining everything. "But you're brilliant."

"Which is the only thing you like about me." David took hold of her hand, gently detaching it from the knot of his tie. The angry scar on the back of it leapt out at her. _I must not question authority_. "I'm not a person, I'm a problem in person form. Whatever you're looking for, you're not going to find it in me."

"If this is about your weight-"

"Don't patronize me, Hermione, I know you wish it was otherwise. And no, it isn't. That is just one of a long, long list of grievances the world has had with me. The fact is, I don't like changing for other people. What do you _want_ out of this?"

Hermione found she didn't know how to answer.

David tilted his head. "Does it get lonely, up there at the top? Surrounded by people who are always one step behind you?"

"You know it does."

"So you want an equal. And yet you've destroyed me in duelling – potions – I never would have thought of the coins – and you've _enjoyed_ it."

That was it. Hermione pulled away from him, turning to hide her face. Hermione Granger, the brightest young witch of her age. She _needed_ that. It was all she had, all that let her stand next to Harry and Ron and feel she was worthy despite her bushy hair and the buck teeth that she'd magicked away in fourth year and yet still found herself trying to hide sometimes, her fussiness, her need to be perfect – she wanted an equal, but she was too scared to allow anyone onto her level.

Was that what this was about? Wrapping David Gold around her finger because she couldn't out-think him in Arithmancy? Taking possession of him so that she wouldn't have to feel so alone?

"But you understand," she mumbled, already knowing it was useless. "You get angry when things aren't right."

"Nothing's ever right, and I'm always angry." He let out a breath, his gaze dropping. "I do understand. But a meeting of minds isn't enough. If you just wanted to know you could make me want you more than anything, then, well… Mazel tov, you got your wish. Here I am at your feet. Now go find yourself somebody you actually _like_ , as well as respect."

Hermione swallowed. Then she sat down against the cool tiled wall, fixing her collar and her hair. Restoring herself. A moment later, he joined her. Outside of the heat of the moment, she had no idea how she had ever found him appealing.

"... I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to string you along."

"Don't rub it in, Granger. My pride is all I've got."

They were back to last names. Probably for the best. "Is it so bad, Gold? That I wanted you to like me even though I couldn't like you?" She understood the way he'd used the word 'like'; not as a squealing teenager who used it to hint at whom she fancied, but to speak of affection for the body and the heart and the mind.

Gold shrugged. "You don't usually try to make people like you. It's like you've given up hope."

"Well." Hermione stared at her hands. " _Granger, the know-it-all. She's a nightmare, honestly!_ " It was impossible to keep the hurt out of her voice. "Harry and Ron were the first people to like me as I am. Most people still don't. It's easier to be respected. If they're not going to like me, I can at least prove I'm clever."

Gold turned to meet her gaze. "You weren't made to fit in. Fuck them all. You don't need their validation. Be exceptional. It won't be lonely forever – Weasley'll grow up, and if he doesn't, he doesn't deserve you."

It was both the nicest thing he'd ever said to her, and the most embarrassing. Thank Merlin he'd stopped her snogging him, thought Hermione. The extent of her mistake was finally beginning to sink in. "You weren't made to fit in either, Gold," she murmured, getting to her feet. Her eyes flickered over him one last time, taking in all the details that had made her so conflicted. "I'm sorry I couldn't like you."

"Stop apologizing and get on with you," said Gold, mock-irritably.

Hermione leaned in to peck him on the cheek again. This time, it was nothing but friendly. "I'll see you at D.A.," she said. Then she disappeared out the door, leaving Gold sitting on his haunches against the wall of an abandoned girls' toilets with his hair a mess. For a while, he didn't move. The only sound was the dripping of the broken-down taps.

"You know, I've always fancied bigger men. If you're not all snogged-out..."

"Oh, shut up, Myrtle."

* * *

 

Didon Pettyfer showed up to that week's D.A. meeting leading a little group of snakes and beaming from ear to ear. "Harry! Harry! Guess what we did?"

"What did you do?"

"We bugged the Slytherin common room," blurted one of the others, a Muggleborn named Lucas Speck.

"Bugged? Muggle devices won't-"

"We're not stupid. A magical bug."

"Didon found a charm that makes things listen-"

"-And we charmed all the torch fixtures and tapestries-"

"-And they send everything they hear to an enchanted quill." Pettyfer waved the quill in front of him. "It writes it all down! We want to hide it here in the Room of Requirement and then we can read it out for anything suspicious-"

Harry was cautiously impressed. He tried to hide it, for the moment. "Do you think they'd be thick enough to talk about anything important in the common room?"

"Some of the muppet baby Death Eaters are pretty thick," observed Pettyfer, sounding an awful lot like Gold. "The other day Malfoy said his family could trace their magic back 3000 years and Crabbe asked Goyle how that was possible when it was only 1995."

Harry winced. "It certainly can't hurt. Good thinking, you lot, very clever."

Speck's grin was almost as wide as his whole face. "If you get any other ideas like that, Harry, let us know. Didon's really good with sneaky little charms. We can't all teach you fancy spells in other languages but we all want to help."

Suddenly, Harry was struck by the utter sincerity on all their faces. They were in the enemy's lair - literally, even - and still doing everything they could for the cause. He'd known Gryffindors who were less brave.

Later, he would realize that bravery, in Slytherin house, was not a rare quality at all.


	4. We Have History

"Harry?"

He looked up, and nearly fell over. Cho Chang stood so close he could smell her floral perfume. It made him feel a bit drunk. "Er. Hi."

"I wanted to ask you..."

"Yeah?" he blurted, a little too eagerly.

"...Are you still looking for other kinds of spells?"

He should not have been disappointed. He was anyway. "Always. You, ah... know some Chinese spells?" Merlin, what if she was Vietnamese and not Chinese? She was Chinese, right? Why didn't he _know_ this?

Cho smiled. "Well - I know one or two. Nothing incredible. Just - just useful little spells. I'm sort of Westernized. But I thought I could write my grandmother... She was around before Mao. She'd remember how things used to be."

"Used to be?" Harry was suddenly aware of how profound his ignorance was.

Cho had barely smiled since Cedric's death. Now she looked wistful and sad. Harry was glad she wasn't crying, at least. "The revolution... Wizards were seen as just another dangerous group, you know, like the Falun Gong, who would not answer to the government. They emigrated or were killed. A lot of the old magic was writing-based and the magical libraries got burned... There are very few wizards left in China now." Suddenly the barest trace of a smile appeared on her face. It was like seeing the sun after a very long rain. "But it's changing. Wizards are coming back. It's a good time to resurrect it, maybe."

Harry thought that was an excellent idea.

* * *

 

After that, Harry made a list.

Parvati and Padma were next. It was still a little awkward talking to them, after the vague disaster of last year's Yule Ball, but they showed him a book of spells their father's father's father had written, all in elegant Hindi calligraphy. Even the Hogwarts library had something to offer on the subject of Indian magic - which, as it turned out, had infiltrated English magic in subtle ways during the British Raj ("You wanted to control us, but you also wanted to _be_ us," said Padma, with a laugh, "We had better food and a better climate. We had colour and pretty ladies. We had a lot more fun."). Indian magic wasn't as experimental as Chinese magic or as solemn as Hebrew magic - every spell had a very clear sense of purpose, but sometimes that purpose was downright mischievous.

Seamus Finnigan didn't know any Gaelic spells to speak of ("You lot are to blame for that! Irish Magic's been dying since Glenmalure. The Black and Tans tramped out the last of it. The English wizards'd have us killed if we spoke spells in Irish. Kippered herring, Harry?") but McGonnagall knew a smattering of very blunt, pragmatic Scotch Gaelic magic, though she looked at him very strange when he asked. He talked to an Italian wizard, who laughed at him ("You're kidding, right? You know what language most of the spells they teach us are?") and a French wizard who didn't know a thing about magic in other languages before it occurred to him that he would need to brush up on his history.

When Hermione found him in the library a week later, poring with fascination over an accounting of the role of wizards in the Norman conquest, she laughed. "And to think - you lot used to make fun of me for taking _Hogwarts: A History_ to bed with me. You're starting to be quite the linguistic historian, Harry."

"Well. It's kind of fascinating. Did you know - all the Latin magic got here through the Normans in 1066? Latin was the magical language of the Aristocracy - that's where the pureblood lineages started - but some of the old Saxon spells from the people who lived here before are still used in the 'low' realms. Cooking and cleaning spells. That sort of thing."

Hermione was beaming at him.

"Of course," added Harry, scratching his head, "that part's completely useless to the cause."

"Knowledge," replied Hermione, primly, "is never useless."

* * *

 

"You're very quiet, aren't you?"

Gold shifted the pillow from his head. His headache was pressing against his skull, a sickening throb.

Normally, sharing a dormitory room with Draco Malfoy meant a constant state of war. The only thing that ever got him any peace was the cloak of heavy wards he'd placed over his own portion of the room, and even then, Malfoy still found ways to try to torture him. Not that Gold didn't give back as good as he got. Today, Draco would have been a fool to start anything major. Crabbe and Goyle were both out taking a fall for him in detention. They were the only two in the dormitory segment. He was unprotected. As duellists they were close to well-matched, but Gold had the edge.

"Normally you never shut up." He could hear a sudden smirk in Malfoy's voice through the bed-hangings. "Imagining your next meal?"

"I'm thinking, Malfoy. You should try it sometime. Then maybe you'd stop beating the 'Gold's fat' dead horse and come up with an insult with a shred of originality to it." He pretended to sound helpful. "You could make fun of my hair, or my taste in music, or my admittedly horrible personality. Get creative, have some fun with it."

Malfoy didn't seem to register the sarcasm. "About what?"

He was surely trying to hide it, but there was a loneliness in those words that was unmistakeable. Rarely did Gold allow himself to feel pity for Draco Malfoy... but perhaps this would be one of the occasions.

That said, he could hardly tell Malfoy about the next spell he planned to introduce to Potter and the D.A. "Girls," he lied, fluidly and, in his opinion, rather generously. _That ought to make the poor little muffin feel better._ It would give Malfoy fodder for poorly-aimed mockery for a month. _  
_

Predictably, Malfoy sniggered, though Gold didn't think it was very convincing. "Have you tried the Forbidden Forest? There might be an Acromantula out there that'd have you."

"Better than Pansy Parkinson."

"Well I wouldn't expect _you_ to know what real breeding looks like."

" _Breeding_ , because it's not enough that she already looks like a prize horse, you've also got to make sure your offspring won't be missing toes. Is she your cousin, Draco, or your half-sister?"

Malfoy huffed. "There are still more than enough true purebloods to keep the line vital."

"You are eighteen different kinds of creepy." Gold rolled over again, putting the pillow back over his head.

For a while, there was blissful silence. Then, out of the blue, "What do you think of Granger?"

For a moment Gold was too stunned to speak. "...I think she's the most talented and intelligent witch in this school," he answered, when the shock finally wore off. Really, why was he surprised?

"Well I think she's a foul, ugly rat-faced mudblood," said Malfoy, with relief evident in his tone.

"Right."

Malfoy didn't seem to catch the disbelief in Gold's tone. "But I suppose _you_ fancy her because she's brainy," he said, with a fair go at dismissive contempt.

"Of course I do," answered Gold, without a trace of apology. Gold could admit to liking a Muggleborn - and Malfoy envied him for it. _What if I told you she cornered me, dragged me by my collar into the abandoned loo and snogged me senseless?_ He imagined Malfoy's head venting steam until it finally burst in a satisfying spray of goop. It was tempting. If not for the fact that it was only his brains Hermione liked, and not the rest of him - 

He wished he could have begrudged her that. But it was for the best.

"Pathetic," said Malfoy, as if he were trying to reassure himself.

"Whatever you say, Malfoy. May you be very happy with Parkinson. I'm sure your children will have only modest intellectual delays and really very small tails, easily removed with modern surgery. Good-night."

"You should learn some respect before that fat mouth gets you in any more trouble."

"Feh."

"When Crabbe and Goyle get back-"

"Feh."

" _I am speaking to you, don't ignore me!_ "

Gold sat up, pulling back the bed-hanging to meet Draco's eyes. "You know, if you're that desperate for someone to talk to, Moaning Myrtle is really a very lonely soul."

Malfoy's face twitched. "I'm not _desperate_." But he hadn't denied the rest.

Gold sighed. The headache flickered. "Something's on your mind."

When Malfoy spoke again it was in a very different tone. He sounded very young. "Do you ever think... is there a spell to do it all over? Go back a few years and just sort of change things?"

"Not that I'm aware of. Time-turners get very unstable past about a month."

"What about your... Jew magic?"

Gold rolled his eyes. "If there was I wouldn't tell it to you, but there isn't."

"But if there was-?"

"Would I use it?" Gold thought about it. "Probably. We've all made shit decisions at some point."

"Some worse than others," mumbled Malfoy, so quietly that Gold nearly missed it.

"Well, then again, maybe I wouldn't. The way I see it, I am fully in control of my destiny at any given point in time. No-one forces me to keep to his chosen path; I force myself." He was fully aware that Malfoy's questions were not truly directed at Gold, but at himself. Gold had certain freedoms of expression that Draco Malfoy did not. It was an opportunity to plant the seeds of an idea in Draco's head. The other boy had a predilection for throwing pity-parties, and perhaps he had earned them, but they seldom seemed to lead to action. Gold had absolutely no patience for self-pity.

"Other people can force you," argued Malfoy.

"Only insofar as they can create you. _Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does_."

"That's rubbish."

Gold had to bite his tongue to keep himself from snapping _that's Jean-Paul Fucking Sartre, you little shit._ Somehow he managed it. "My options may be limited by circumstance, Draco, but I have options. What are yours?"

"None of your concern, blood traitor."

Gold could tell he'd overstepped. "It's a rhetorical question, Malfoy."

"Is it, though?" Suddenly Malfoy's voice was not small and youthful but low and dangerous. He sounded, Gold realized, like Snape. "I'm sure you'd love to know all about my options. I know you're friendly with Potter - aren't you?"

Gold reached for his wand. "I wouldn't say 'friendly'."

"Granger! You said yourself you fancy her." Malfoy had his wand out too. "And now you're _spying_ for them. On your own house. I might have known - never trust a kike-"

That was it. Gold lost it. " _Karat basar!_ "

The curse cut a deep slice in Malfoy's cheek, but it didn't stun him. " _Crucio!_ "

The torture curse rebounded off Gold's wards, but he felt them weaken and tear. They hadn't been erected to withstand unforgivables. " _Oppugnum!_ "

Lamps, books, papers; objects hailed towards Malfoy's head. Malfoy threw up a shielding charm. By the time the flurry of loose pages had stopped, Gold was on his feet, wand at the ready. " _Tambah yashen!_ "

Malfoy dodged the stunning spell. The force of a _reducto_ grazed Gold's shoulder, leaving a shallow gouge, and battered into the wall behind them. Wooden panelling fell in splinters. Bedposts had started to come down.

" _Nakash_!"

Malfoy was thrown bodily to the stone floor with tremendous force. Breathless, he hissed a flame hex. It set the bed hangings aflame and caught Gold on the wand arm, singeing him before he could put it out fully with water-charm. Malfoy was limping for the door.

"Get back here, you khnyok little weasel, I'm not done with you-"

Gold started after him, out the door - and ran straight into the bulk of Crabbe and Goyle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have, for the most part, chosen not to translate anything Gold says in either Hebrew or Yiddish, but 'khnyok' is too good to waste - it explicitly means a bigot, an ultraconservative person, an intolerant person, but it bears connotations of weakness or cowardice.


	5. Paradox in a Box

"Idiot boy."

Gold had a black eye, a broken nose and a good-sized second-degree burn, and his shoulder was leaking blood. He was fairly sure one of his ribs was cracked. The only thing keeping him upright besides a stubborn heart was the old Hebrew strengthening charm supporting his ribcage. Three against one did not good odds make.

"Sit." Snape was glaring at him. "Our house, Mr. Gold, prides itself on its sense of decorum and _self-preservation_."

Gold sat. "The only problem there, sir, is that I happen to value my identity rather more than my skin."

"Keep your attitude for those fools as are impressed by it. Do you not realize what is coming?"

Snape had always seemed to like him, in a strange way. He put Gold through more detentions than almost any other Slytherin, which meant that in Gold's formative years they had spent a lot of time together. Sometimes while Gold sorted beetle eyes or scrubbed cauldrons Snape would talk to him - long, informal yet eloquent lectures about the origins of spells, the fluid nature of magical energies, the social history of the wizarding world. He had learned a lot from the bat of the dungeons.

"A war."

Snape said nothing. It was as good as a yes.

"I've chosen my side already. I won't want to live in the world if we lose."

"And those who answer to you?"

Gold hesitated.

"Believe me, it would cause me no pain whatsoever to see you repeatedly beaten bloody over your own bullheadedness." Snape took a seat at his desk, gaze falling to his paperwork. "But. You serve a useful function within Slytherin house. Others follow where you lead."

It was the nearest thing he had ever gotten to a compliment from Snape, but he couldn't help but feel sour towards it. He resented the implications.

" _Episky_." Snape flicked his wand and Gold felt the familiar sting of his nose repairing itself. It had been broken more times than he could remember. "A month's detention. Be glad you are not serving it with Umbridge." Another flick of his wand, and the door opened, a clear signal for Gold to get out. "Selfishness may be an inherently Slytherin trait, but I hope you will divest yourself of it. Now go. I have an appointment to keep."

Gold got to his feet, his defiance fizzling.

"And Mr. Gold?"

"Yes sir."

"When you are released from the hospital wing it is probably for the best that you do not return to your dormitory."

* * *

 

Harry nearly leapt out of his skin. Gold was already no particular thing of beauty, but now his face was a mess of blood and bruises. Sitting in the shadows by the Gryffindor common room entrance with his knees tucked into his chest, he looked like a gargoyle.

"Hello Potter."

"What- what are you doing here?"

"I may have destroyed my dormitory a bit."

"A bit?"

"I cursed Malfoy. Things... progressed."

It reminded Harry of the summer before his third year, when he'd accidentally blown up his Aunt Marge. The residual anger, the trace of fear, and underneath that that tiny part of you that found the whole thing hilarious... Gold's face was more angry and amused than scared, but Harry knew enough to know people who weren't scared didn't usually crouch in the shadows outside other people's common rooms on the off chance someone would come along. "Have you been to the hospital wing?"

Gold ignored him. "Is Her- Is Granger awake?"

* * *

 

Word travelled quickly in Slytherin house.

It was almost two in the morning. Didon Pettyfer and Thomas Tasker barricaded the common room, warding the doors with Hebrew incantations. Inside, the snakes were pale and fidgety, robes thrown over their pyjamas. Tasker lit candles, one-by-one, murmuring the wards over them in melodic tones. The sound should have been soothing. Instead, it was eerie.

"-Have to do something."

"If I'd been there-"

Pettyfer stood on a chair - effectively raising herself to everyone else's head height - and fired off a stream of sparks from her wand. "Everybody shut up!"

The snakes slowly fell silent. Pettyfer was small, but her voice filled the room. "This," she said, "is tantamount to a declaration of war."

Murmurs riffled through the room at the word 'war'.

"We've always said we were Slytherins. But over the years we have been here we have seen something take root in our house, and I, for one, will not live and work side-by-side with future Death Eaters." Someone was banging at the common room door. She glanced upward, worried, but the wards were holding, for the moment. "Gold attacked Malfoy tonight. And I say it's about bloody time someone did."

"Why, though?" asked a tentative voice, from the back of the room.

"I heard he was provoked," answered another snake.

"Of course he was provoked," said Tasker, "It's _Malfoy_. He's a walking provocation. All he has to do is exist."

"This house's corruption extends into the teachers, too. How many of us have been branded by Umbridge?"

That got an angry murmur.

"Malfoy got off scott free - Crabbe and Goyle got their wrists slapped for ganging up three to one and seriously hurting him - and where's our Gold? What have they done with him?" Pettyfer's voice was furious. There was a reason she was up here. Who could have predicted she would be speaking in front of a crowd, leading in the absence of a leader? Certainly not her. The youngest of five children, all purebloods, all steeped in Dark Magic. The social rules of the pureblood circles could have been her bible. And she had lived in fear. Until David Gold turned up, all piss and vinegar and pride, breaking every rule in the book, telling all the ugly truths, refusing to be what Slytherin wanted him to be, and called her to a higher sense of morality. They followed him because he was the antithesis of everything they had known, and everything they had known was misery. To some extent Pettyfer had always thought of him as invulnerable... but he wasn't in the hospital wing, he wasn't in his destroyed dorm, and he wasn't in the room of requirement. And she'd begun to worry.

Above all, she was scared Umbridge had him. Pettyfer had no doubt that toad would kill him if she thought she could get away with it.

"I say we follow his example," said Pettyfer, when the room had fallen silent again. "We show our defiance. There's a cancer growing in Slytherin house and it's time to cut it away or be cut away ourselves."

The banging on the door grew louder. Her hand clenched in a fist around her wand.

* * *

 

Outside, Filch hammered at the door with the butt end of a broom, cursing incomprehensibly, while Umbridge aimed reductor curses and ward-breaking spells on it. Strands were beginning to fly loose from her girlish poof of hair.

"Can't you break it?" asked Malfoy, looking on flanked by Crabbe and Goyle.

Umbridge clearly did not want to say no, but there was little else she could say.

Malfoy glanced up at him. "You try, Professor Snape."

Snape did not want to try. The snakes were fools - rebellious children - but they wanted what was right and they were willing to fight for it. They were proof that Slytherin house was not inherently bad. And if he opened the door now, they would all be expelled.

But with Malfoy and Umbridge watching, he could not easily refuse. Snape stepped forward. " _Aperio maxima_." A bolt of white energy struck the common room door, but it did not yield.

Good. So Gold and the rest of the snakes were resourceful enough to call themselves true Slytherins. He fought the urge to smile. "I am very sorry, High Inquisitor, but I fear this ward is unfamiliar to me."

Umbridge stared at him as though her gaze could make him burst into flame. Then she turned back to the door, attacking it with a vigour that bordered on insanity.

* * *

 

"You-" _Thud._ "Bloody-" _Thud._ "Idiot!" _Thud._

"Ow."

Hermione dropped the book - the nearest thing on-hand, for hitting him with - and stuffed her hand into her pocket, pulling out a golden galleon. It was still hot. "Thirty-six messages I've gotten in the past half-hour, _thirty-six_!" Gold looked perplexed, but she steamrolled on. "Your snakes barricaded themselves in the common room. And according to the bugging devices, they're about to rebel."

Gold stared at her dubiously through his one good eye. "It was just a scuffle."

"No it _wasn't!_ Look at you! Don't think I didn't notice how funny you're breathing just because you cheated with a strengthening charm - You're going to be in the hospital wing for a _week_ and if you're not I might just put you there myself."

At least Gold had the decency to look ashamed. "I hate hospitals," he mumbled. "I've wasted so much time in hospitals."

"So you came _here_?" demanded Hermione. "The snakes have no idea where you are. They're scared witless."

"Why would they be-"

 _Because_ , Hermione wanted to bark, _when you do stupid, self-destructive things you hurt other people besides yourself._ But Gold would have argued, and right now she needed him to listen. "Because they'd do anything you told them. If you were trying to raise an army of little Golds, you've gotten your wish."

"That's the exact _opposite_ of what I'm trying to do," objected Gold. "They're supposed to challenge the status quo. They're supposed to _think for themselves._ " For the first time since Hermione had met him, he looked confused.

It took all the heat out of Hermione's anger. She sank into the armchair across from his. They were in the Gryffindor common room. It was empty at this hour, apart from Harry and Ron, who stood a short was away as if to give them space to talk. "You taught them to question everyone else but you never taught them to question _you_ , did you?"

His silence was an answer in itself. Gold was no good at admitting to being wrong.

"Remember what you told me about House-Elves? You can't teach someone to think independently just by telling them to. You can't model true autonomy. They have to learn it for themselves." Hermione sighed, taking the golden galleon from her pocket to pass it back and forth between her fingers. Around the rim, words crawled like ants, everything from declarations of rebellion and solidarity to frantic searches. "You're very good at _looking_ like you don't care what anybody else thinks of you or does to you."

"Because I _don't,"_ growled Gold, _"_ I don't need a pat on the head for doing the right thing. I'm not afraid of them."

"Then why did you attack Malfoy?"

"I told you I was a problem, Granger."

"That's an excuse, not an answer."

"He called me -" Gold suddenly seemed to understand. He closed his mouth.

 _If you really didn't care, David, then it wouldn't have bothered you_. _The word wouldn't hurt, whatever word it was._ "You've set an example for them," Hermione told him, "whether you like it or not."

Ron cleared his throat. "We're supposed to be the good guys. We don't just attack people. Not even Malfoy." There was a hint of uncertainty in his tone. She knew it took courage for him to speak, when so much of what they said was obscure to him. And he was right. Ron didn't need abstract language or dialectic to understand morality, and sometimes Hermione loved him for it.

" _Cathari_. _Papaloi_." Hermione flicked her wand, and the blood scrubbed itself from Gold's face. He winced as threads picked themselves through the worst cuts, sealing them tight. "There. Now here's what you're going to do, you're going to go down to your common room and deal with this before anyone else gets themselves killed, because it's your responsibility as their so-called leader and because you might be the only one who can."

Gold looked as though he were about to argue, but the argument never came. He got to his feet, giving them a last fierce look, and limped to the portrait hole.

"...Hermione?" asked Harry, when he had gone.

"Yeah Harry?"

"Was that... Greek?"

Hermione hadn't thought about it before. "Most healing spells are in Greek - Hippocrates was supposed to be a Warlock, I've read."

"I need to go to the library," said Harry distractedly, making for the door.

"Harry, it's two in the morning. You're turning into _me_."


	6. Black and White and Grey

By the time Gold reached the dungeons he could not stand unaided. Good, he decided. If telling them wouldn't suffice, he would show them how wrong he could be. He made his agonizingly slow way along the well, leaning his weight against the stone. He could hear footsteps in the hallway beyond, coming towards him fast. Gold found himself hoping it was one of the snakes, come to find him.

No. Just his luck. It was Malfoy. Gold set his teeth and reached for his wand. He would not attack first this time - but he wouldn't hesitate to defend himself from Malfoy's curses.

Malfoy got closer and closer and still they didn't come. _Fine,_ thought Gold. Let Malfoy enjoy his moment of triumph. Let him gloat. But Malfoy didn't look much like he was enjoying himself. Unlike Gold he had clearly been to the hospital wing, but there were still long, crimson slashes across the pale skin of his face. Both boys stared at each other, struck by the aftermath.

"The common room's sealed off," said Malfoy. "Somebody warded it shut."

"I know."

"This is your doing, isn't it."

Gold didn't directly answer. "I'm going to fix it."

Malfoy frowned. He seemed to be thinking something over. "That, I'd like to see."

"By all means," said Gold, keeping his face carefully impassive. The last thing he wanted was for Malfoy to play witness, but he couldn't keep him from it without resorting to magic, and he wouldn't risk another firefight. An idea presented itself. "One moment, Malfoy. I need to do something and I can't cast this spell while I'm looking at your face."

Malfoy's hand went for his wand, but he didn't attack. Gold turned away from him, focused his mind. The first image that came to him was Hermione grabbing him by the collar with that look of heated insanity in her eyes. She'd wanted something he had to offer. Didn't really matter what. " _Expecto Patronum._ "

A silver shape bloomed from his wand - a squat animal, bristling with sharp quills. It approached him. Gold whispered to it for a moment, then flicked his wand, and it moved like a ghost through the corridor's stone wall, disappearing from view.

Malfoy was scowling at him. "What did you do that for?"

"It cheered me up," said Gold. It wasn't, strictly speaking, a lie. He wished he could have kept the Patronus close to him. It dulled the pain and made him think of better times. Rosh Ha'Shanah with his brothers in London. Wizards' chess with the snakes on the train home for summer. Arriving for the first time at Hogwarts, where nobody knew about the ticking time bomb in his brain and nobody treated him with pity. He was so tired of pity.

He kept moving, putting his weight against the wall with every limping step.

"Would you hurry it up?"

Gold raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, you know, I was only limping to pass the time," he drawled.

Malfoy said nothing. Instead, he moved between Gold and the wall and shouldered Gold's arm, bracing his weight like a human crutch. Gold stared at him. Malfoy glared back. "What? I'm not waiting for you to crawl along here for another hour before you clean up your bloody mess. It's my common room. I want to sleep."

Gold wanted to say _I don't bloody need your help_. He held his tongue. It wasn't a great deal faster - Malfoy was struggling - but it took far more strain off his injured rib than the wall did. _Charity_ , from Draco Malfoy?

"Merlin, you're heavy," grunted Malfoy.

"Congratulations, you went three seconds without acting like a tosser. Personal best."

"Shut your fat mouth and move."

" _You_ shut your mouth."

"Fine."

"Fine!"

* * *

 

The banging on the door had gotten louder. Pettyfer could hear shouts. Angry spells in a high girlish voice. The wards held. Inside, a Muggleborn named Combeferre was singing a rousing song about a revolution. Some of them seemed excited. Others were quiet.

She and Tasker were drawing up a list of demands. _The complete removal of the blood quill punishment, which, according to British Law, constitutes a human rights offence. The expulsion of Draco Malfoy, Gregory Goyle and Vincent Crabbe for the serious injury of a fellow student. The segregation of all those intolerant of Muggleborn witches and wizards from the remainder of Slytherin house. The addition of global magic to the curriculum. The removal from office of Severus Snape and Dolores Jane Umbridge, who have shown clear bias and sadism towards disfavoured students._

"We're never going to get those last two," Tasker pointed out.

Pettyfer rolled her eyes. "Haven't you ever been in a negotiation with the authorities? You start by over-demanding and then you haggle."

"Have _you_?"

"No, but I've read about them," said Pettyfer, primly.

Lucas Speck approached them, clearing his throat. "Um - Didon- has Harry said anything about this? And the rest of the D.A.?"

Tasker butted in. "The Gryffindors aren't involved in this. Nor is any other house. Your loyalty is to the snakes first, isn't it?"

"Yes, but-"

"Remember when Blaise Zabini got you in a _Levicorpus_ and tried to hex 'Muggle-lover' onto your skin? Where were the Gryffindors then? Gold was the one who took on Zabini for you, not Potter."

Lucas hesitated. He seemed to swallow his words. "What do we do if they break the wards?" he asked, after a moment.

"We fight," said Pettyfer.

And then the porcupine came through the walls.

It was silvery and insubstantial, practically made of light. Pettyfer had never seen a real porcupine, but she doubted they were as big as this one, or as heavily defended - its quills made it seem twice its real size. It was nowhere near as handsome as many of the Patroni the others had summoned in the room of requirement. There was nothing noble about it. But that was how Pettyfer had always seen him. Not romantic, not idealized, but fierce and fearless.

It spoke with the voice of David Gold. " _Hide the candles. Go back to your dorm rooms. Leave the wards up so they don't catch you as you go, but otherwise, make it so that none of this ever happened. This is the last time I will ever ask you to trust my judgement. Just do as I say._ "

Pettyfer was bewildered and disappointed. She wanted to ask why, but the animal had already vanished into wisps of light.

* * *

 

Malfoy moved away from him just before they rounded the final corner and came into view of the common room. Gold understood that this was never to be spoken of again. He leaned against the wall again, and hobbled round the corner.

There stood Snape, Umbridge and Filch, their wands out. The moment Umbridge spotted him her expression turned predatory.

"This is all _his_ fault," said Malfoy.

Gold didn't know whether Malfoy had been trying to trick him into walking right into their laps or not. He didn't particularly care. Gold made eye contact with Snape, who had fixed him with a look that was subtly disappointed. _Trust me, professor, this time I know what I'm doing_.

"What have you _done_?" demanded Umbridge. She looked quite insane, her hair flying around her face, her bow askew and her eyes fiery.

"Nothing at all," said Gold, lamb-innocent. "May I go to my dormitory, ma'am?"

She sputtered for words, but said nothing. Gold edged past her towards the common room's entrance. He spoke the password aloud, then added, in the faintest of whispers, " _Dalet bakah_."

The entrance slid open, revealing a long stone tunnel. Silently, Ubridge, Filch, Malfoy and Snape followed him inside, down the corridor. Gold found himself praying. _Let them be gone. Let them be safe._

The common room was deserted. The only sign anyone had been here were the hardened droplets of wax on the floors.

Umbridge was about to implode. She rounded on him, her want perilously close to his throat. "How- what did you- You're responsible for this! Tell me what you did!"

Snape cleared his throat. "Professor Umbridge, while I agree that Mr. Gold is, generally speaking, up to something, in this instance I can see no reason to believe he is to blame for the wards."

"Mr. Malfoy said he was!" Umbridge turned to find him - but Malfoy was already gone.

Gold smiled very sweetly at her. "How could I be responsible, ma'am? I'm a fifth-year. How could I possibly raise a ward that you, and Professor Snape - both highly experienced and skilled wizards, I am quite sure - couldn't break through?"

Snape's mouth twitched in amusement. Umbridge just stared, her mouth open and gaping, as if unwilling to believe any of this was happening.

"He was, however, out of bed after hours, and so I will require of him a further detention. Go to bed, Mr. Gold," said Snape, with a finality in his tone. " _And consider yourself extremely fortunate that cunning is a virtue in my eyes_ ," he added, in a whisper that only Gold could hear, when Umbridge had turned on her heel and was storming away.

* * *

 

The next day, nobody saw him at all. But a letter appeared in the pocket of Didon Pettyfer's robes. That night, she gathered them together in the room of requirement and read it aloud.

_Snakes,_

_First, do not think me ungrateful. I am more grateful than my pride will allow me to say. But you are all idiots. Wonderful, wonderful idiots._

_I have seen your list of demands (next time, don't lock your trunk with a spell I taught you, Pettyfer. Your diary was very funny. No, he's not cute. Don't date him. Don't do it.) and in principle, I agree with each one of them. But did a single one of you consider the consequences before you showed solidarity in the most reactionary way possible? There is a war coming. Don't hurry it along with a fruitless rebellion._

_We are Slytherins. We don't show loyalty without thought like Hufflepuffs and we don't rush blindly into danger like Gryffindors. Draco Malfoy was wrong, but I was more wrong to attack him for it. And you declared your support for me without knowledge of my motives. I am a bastard, fellow snakes. Never forget it. The moment you stop questioning me, you become a danger to yourselves and to the world. You must question authority - even and perhaps especially your own authority._

_I am not telling you to stand idly by, theorizing about morality, while atrocities of inequality and prejudice happen in our own common room. We are not Ravenclaws either. Slytherins, at our best, can change the world as nobody else can. We are cunning, strategic, determined and pragmatic. We think for ourselves. But if your time in the D.A. has taught you nothing else I hope it has taught you that each of us has different virtues to bring to the cause. You are not all fighters. Some of you are leaders. Some of you are planners. Some of you are better suited as spies. Do not think you have to rebel loudly and viciously just because I do - I have my reasons and I sincerely hope none of you share them. Choose your own way. Be tactical and smart. It could be that our position in the midst of the enemy is to our advantage._

_One final thing. We're **children**. _

_Before you object on grounds of your stolen innocence, think of our 'sworn enemies', the muppet baby Death Eaters. Have they been marked? Have they killed? No. And it is not too late for them to change their fates. Even Malfoy may not be wholly worthless as a human being. Don't be so arrogantly certain of your own moral rectitude that you view the world as a chessboard of right and wrong. One day soon we may be forced to divide the world into good and bad for the sake of defending the good. But until that day comes, let nobody be 'them' and everybody be 'us'._

_Don't visit me. I'm fine, but my hair is a wreck._

_-Gold_

* * *

 

Hermione brought the week's Arithmancy homework to the hospital wing. She also brought news. Gold seemed to appreciate that far more than the sweets the snakes sent him, which inevitably got confiscated by Madam Pomfrey, with clucking noises and murmurs of _blatant disregard for his own wellbeing, honestly._

"Hospitals are cages," groused Gold. "Whatever happened to patient autonomy? The dignity of free will?"

"You consider eating chocolate frogs to be an expression of free will?"

"Duh."

Hermione shook her head and smiled. "Vector says I ought to stop bringing you notes. Give you a chance to rest and give myself a chance to get ahead."

"Ah, but what would be the fun of that?"

"Well, she also says she's glad we worked out our 'unresolved intellectual tension.'"

Gold laughed, and winced as he did.

"And Harry's teaching the D.A. Mandarin spells now. I think it's partially a convenient excuse to flirt with Cho Chang, but not totally. This languages thing - he really likes it. He says we need every tool we can get."

"Good. He's right. You-Know-Who doesn't acknowledge the value of a lot of things. Other languages, other cultures..."

"Muggles. Muggleborns. House Elves."

"Exactly. That's his mistake and our advantage. How's Spew?"

She made a face at him. "Dobby's written us some pamphlets. He wasn't too pleased when I reworded them into first person."

"Change them back. Elves consider the use of first person to be a gesture of arrogance. It'll alienate them."

"I will." She tilted her head at him. "Are you going to be okay?"

Gold shrugged. She had a feeling he wasn't telling her everything, but that was alright.

"I'll come back tomorrow," said Hermione, getting up, and kissed him on the cheek before she went.


	7. Epilogue

The rubble of Hogwarts was cold and bright in the morning sunlight. Silent. Harry felt empty.

A week since the final battle. The rebuilding was already well underway, bigger, better, a fitting tribute to the losses they had suffered. There was to be a Remus Lupin Room added to the library, full of defence texts and comfy armchairs - an entire new wing named for Dumbledore, decorated in lavendar - a Severus Snape memorial statue next to the lake - people were talking about a Harry Potter Hall of Multilingual Magic, though he had tried everything to get them to rename it -

It seemed their optimism was only matched by their pain.

Celebration mingled with grief until the emotion of it all was overwhelming, and Harry found, all too often, that he needed to be away. He thought of Snape a lot. And his parents, strangely. He could not yet think too much about Lupin, or Tonks, or Fred, or anyone else they had lost. Harry could not help but think how close it had all been – if they hadn't had the help of the Elves, or many languages of magic up their sleeves – if Neville hadn't had the sword, or if Harry had not been there to see Snape's dying breath – So many forms of magic that the Dark Lord knew not –

He'd drive himself mad thinking like that.

After a while, a sound reached his ears. Footsteps, speaking. Glancing up the hill, he saw a coffin making its slow way down the crest of the hill and out towards the forest, to the space that had been reserved for burials. Funerals happened every day, now.

It was a Slytherin funeral, he realized, seeing the green and silver sash draped across the coffin. An undersized coffin. Harry lowered his eyes Slughorn was leading the little procession and orating as he went. His voice carried down the hill, towards the ruined bridge where Harry sat.

"Ms. Pettyfer was one of that brave number of Slytherins who opposed the will of He Who Must Not be Named – who acted as spies from within their own house, reporting the activities of the Death Eaters -"

Pettyfer was dead?

Harry had not thought of the rebel snakes in a very long time. Thoughts of Slytherin had driven his mind to the Death Eaters or to Snape, and those two specters haunted him enough to leave little room for anything else. Now he remembered them. Their bravery. Poor Pettyfer, whose tiny mother was weeping into a silk scarf as she followed her daughter's coffin.

Harry found Neville in the graveyard, planting flowers at what was to be Pettyfer's headstone. Neville looked up at him and got to his feet, wiping sweat off his brow and leaving a long trail of black soil across his forehead. "Hiya, Harry."

He found it touching that Neville was planting the flowers with his hands instead of using magic. "How'd she die?"

Neville bit his lip. "Fenrir," he murmured. "She held him off for a pretty long time, before he got her."

"I remember her – She was tough." Harry was quiet for a moment. "Did they all fight?"

"Who- the snakes? All who could. Some of them were too badly injured. The Muggleborns, see. The Carrows tortured a few of them not long before everything went mad. The spies all attacked from the inside - Hewlett took out Knott with a _Yemack Shemo_ – Speck knocked an acromantula off the bridge -"

Harry was struck by how plainly Neville spoke all these ugly truths. Was it still the same confused little boy who'd lost his toad on the train?

Harry had always thought of himself as their leader, whether he wanted to be or not, but in his absence so many of the others in the D.A. had stepped up to fill his shoes. And done well. Better than he could have, he thought.

"They were with us the whole way, Harry. Some of them spied on the Carrows for us - stayed in Hogwarts even after we'd gotten most of the Gryffindors out. We used the coins to stay in contact. Some of the others came with us and helped."

"How many made it through the battle?"

Neville shrugged. "About half?"

"What happened to David Gold?"

"Ahh…" Neville seemed to be searching for the right words. "Gold went a bit mental, actually. He said he'd have been no good as a spy, everyone in Slytherin already knew what he stood for, so he resisted the Carrows every step of the way - made their lives hell. We had to stun him to get him out of there. They'd nearly killed him and he still didn't want to go - kept saying if he was going to die it might as well be for something. That was all we could get out of him. Mental." Neville shook his head. "'Course, he didn't go _properly_ mental until the battle. He killed three Death Eaters and a giant. Probably more. You remember the one witch who nearly cursed Hermione? He got hold of her and - well. Just utterly _mental_."

Harry found he could picture it. He wanted to ask Neville the obvious question, but feared he already knew the answer.

Neville seemed to read it on his face. "They're going to put him over there later tonight," he told Harry, pointing to one of the empty graves. "I've got no idea what to plant. It's always harder with boys."

"Something prickly," suggested Harry.

* * *

 

After the funeral that evening, the four of them – Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville – stood by the graves in the dying twilight.

"…Almost for the best, really," said Neville. "He wouldn't have been happy unless there was something to work against. He didn't do peace, did he? Always had to be fighting for somebody." He set a pebble on top of the headstone, in a heap with all the others. The snakes had all been by already. One of them had written in chalk, on the tomb, the words _I must question authority._

Harry set his stone next, then Ron. The four of them mumbled awkwardly through a Kaddish, and then the boys left.

Hermione stayed a little longer, one hand resting on the headstone. In spite of herself, she smiled. Neville was wrong – Gold would have been happy enough if he had lived. The war might have been over, but there was always, _always_ somebody to fight for.

She put her pebble on his headstone, and then went back to the castle, where Ron was waiting for her.

* * *

 

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

Granger would be by later to talk to him. Ever since she'd discovered his spirit wandering the dungeons, she made time to visit him whenever she could. In the wake of so much destruction she had become an activist among activists - had fixed herself on rebuilding the wizarding world, newer, brighter, fairer. Equal opportunities for intelligent non-human magical creatures. Advocacy for Elves and Centaurs and Goblins alike. The wiping of blood status from all forms of legislation. Increased awareness of multicultural magic. Actual real-life inter-house unity. A brave new world.

Some of the surviving snakes were in on it too. And Weasley, surprisingly. Granger seemed happy. She'd finally reconciled her heart and her head.

"What was your unfinished business, anyway? We've all got some. That's the only reason you keep going like this."

Gold shrugged. "Fixing the world. What other business can there be?"

"Haunting's always nice. Might be right up your street." The other ghost giggled. "Sooo... Now that neither one of us is corporeal..."

"I said shut up, Myrtle."

_fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a pleasure, and stay tuned for the connected series of oneshots soon to come.


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